It's an emotional argument to soothe their conscience by asserting that there was a legitimate reason for this to happen.
If you want to see a major part of why the TSA is still molesting, you don't have to go searching for mythical sheeple in far away states - just look at a third of the comments in this thread.
As much as I agree with your first sentence, I find your second offensive with the use of "sheeple." It's a tired perjorative that makes you look like you belong on some tinfoil covered forum.
Eh, that's why I prefixed it with 'mythical'. There isn't one large group of clueless people that need to receive a message - it's that propaganda is so incessant that for every topic, it overloads a significant fraction of critical thinkers and tricks them into supporting that broken system because they crave simplicity.
Also, I had a tinfoil covered basement once. It was pretty sweet.
If you want to see a major part of why the TSA is still molesting, you don't have to go searching for mythical sheeple in far away states - just look at a third of the comments in this thread.